Lady of the Night
by lechatfemme
Summary: A short vignette on the life of Selina Kyle, beginning in death and darkness, culminating in romantically tragic events inspired Batman comic "Hush". A song-fic, inspired by Regina's Spektor's "Lady" . Rated T for allusions to sexual abuse, death, and suicide.


_{(Disclaimer: I do not own anything. Period. It's a bit AU at the end, but I like the idea of their first meeting being when Selina was singing in a bar in order to stake out a mark, and Bruce on stakeout as well, of an allegedly amazing cat burglar._

_"Lady", by Regina Spektor, is found on YouTube easily. I highly recommend you listen to it before/after/during/at some point around reading this fic.)}_

* * *

_**Lady sing the blues so well,**__**  
**__**as if she mean it.**_

* * *

Hours melted into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, the passage of time marked only by hungry whimpers and the endlessly circling pilgrimage between shadowed bars and sympathetic restaurant managers. Far too many suns had risen and set as they lived on scraps and handouts, huddling more closely than the doves perched innocently above their heads to protect the little ones against the sinister night winds, growing increasingly harsher with the descent of winter over the slums.

Selina sighed, gently brushing a strand of rain-soaked hair from the little smile nuzzled against her ribs.

It had never been meant to go on this long.

* * *

_**As if it's hell down here in this smoke-filled world where the jokes are cold**_  
_**they don't laugh at jokes,**__**  
**__**they laugh at tragedy.**_

* * *

Many moons passed since their escape from Gotham's infamous city orphanage, where a small, keen-eyed child had been dumped by foster care officials seeming eons before. Another ward of the State, locked away within lifeless walls. "Protection from the outside," the workers exclaimed between spankings and bowls of inedible gnosh, bowing in all but posture before their steel-clad god.

_Protection for who? _she wondered. A _'Miss Selina Kyle! You apologize this instant!_', as growled by the matron upon her first violation of orphanage rules: the theft of a blue jacket, pilfered from the supply closet and handed quietly to the little, greasy-breathed boy in Room 11b suffering from pneumonia.  
Her bottom lip jutted out, trembling, but a steely firmness lodged in her glare. "I will _not_ say sorry."

Summers caved in to winter's caress for many cycles, long enough for important birthdays to go uncelebrated, before the escape. Seamless, simple, and silent was the stealthy crawl from barracks to kitchen quarters and out the back door. Missing children were but stray cats; unclaimed voids of _need, _swallowing already tightly stretched financial resources - believed dead within hours, she would not be chased by the law.

Initially, it was intended to be a solitary venture. The first of many self-interested leaps into the unknown.  
But that was before Holly awoke in her bed alone, creeping into the night, unafraid, in search of her companion. The two had begun rooming together for several years now, after the elder girl rescued her from the far-reaching clutches of the orphanage's corrupted, perverted Overseer by claiming a (false) familial relation in shrill, believably panicked, screams. She cast long shadows in the empty hall, stumbling unbidden in Selina's wake and nursing a purple, crescent-shaped bruise around her wrist.

Yawning, Holly rubbed the remnants of sleep from her wide eyes and wove her fragile fingers through Selina's calloused palm.

"Where're we gonna go now, 'Lina?"

* * *

_**Corner street societies. They believe her.**__**  
**__**They never leave her.**__**  
**__**When she sings, she makes them feel things:**_

* * *

"Bitch," snarling from the darkness of a East Side favela sprawled a man out of his mind with drunken fervor, unable to will his body into action while the young woman in black rifled through his wallet.

Blood red lips parted in a slow smile. The first grin, the smirk to become a signature, the unknown foreshadowing of dark nights yet to come.

_"Thanks_, sweetheart." Long ago she had _believed_ in a line between right and wrong. Instilled with abhorrence for criminal behavior by the sins of her father. Bad and good were like black and white, as opposite as day and night, and as uncrossable as the river between her grounds and downtown Gotham City.

* * *

_**she says, I can sing this song so blue**__**  
**__**that you will cry, in spite of you,**__**  
**__**little wet tears on your baby's shoulder.**_

* * *

_Before_. All before. Now, the life of another rested on her shoulders, _petty morals be damned_. The time of fairytales had passed, and much like the Santa Clause who never came, any semblance of a a commonplace code was abandoned. _Morals_ were an extravagance that couldn't be afforded. They only applied to the rich, the famous, the cream-licking upper crust of society who didn't _need_ to worry about their next meal, were not _made_ by cruel Fate to bite and scrap for life itself in the most desolate corners of their godforsaken city of monsters.

Sympathy was the most effective tool when it came to a con, but alcohol made a better bedmate.

Morals were too _expensive_ for the likes of Ms. Kyle: fake call-girl, decent bar entertainer, primarily pocket-picker, extraordinaire.

* * *

_**And I have walked these streets so long,**__**  
**__**there ain't nothing right, there ain't nothing wrong.**_

* * *

Years later, the familiar moon turned enemy against her. While the sun's harsh rays was a mask in of itself, the moon casted soft, crooning lullabies over exposed lies, leaving raw wounds in its wake; targets, for the adversary and lover alike. The sun closed windows. The moon opened hearts, parted lips, illuminated new paths.

Led _Hush _to her doorstep.

"Catwoman," His voice - not Batman, _Bruce_ - worried and urgent, made frighteningly coarse from underuse, pulled at her semi-conscious _slip, slip, slipping away_ into the abyss of unconsciousness. _Hell is empty. All the devils...were...here._

"..Selina."  
A ragged breath rattled her heart in its cold, vicelike fingers.

"_Selina!_ Hold on, Selina, please - "

Laughter flowed unbidden from _her_ broken body at the irony, spilling into his hands, turning the hot blood cloaking her cracked ribs into decoration on a crystal altar. Memories surged, and she remembered - a similar embrace between the two, unmasked, the first time, _excuse me, miss, your voice is too lovely for such a sad song_, a bar on the South Side; fleeting ignorance of their true identities.

Melodic foreshadowing, unrealized, until now.

_"_ _'I could sing this song so blue, that you'd cry, in spite of you," One, two,_ salty rain splattered her cheeks,_"little wet tears on your baby's shoulder,'_" strained, her voice carried no irony, made honest by the cursed moon.

Selina laughed again, darkly, coughing from liquid iron slicking her teeth. Sickly. Fading. Shaking hands found his mask, revealing storm clouds waiting, pleading silently for a happier ending to this _sad song. It's too sad for your lovely voice. I'm sorry, I don't believe we've been introduced. Bruce Wayne, miss?_  
_-...Kyle. Ms. Selina Kyle.__  
_  
But there was none.

"_Bruce_...little wet tears on _my_ shoulder..."


End file.
